My blog and podcast platform, “Vault to Investment Real Estate Success,” is a call to action for you to have investment real estate as part of your financial portfolio.
“Here’s the Thing”
Right now, the real estate market is on hold, like many non-essential businesses. The municipal, state, provincial, and federal governments don’t want realtors or homeowners doing live showings.
The Message to Realtors is clear, “Stay Home and Go Virtual.”
The real estate world has been going virtual for years but still needs human interaction to complete the transaction.
“Even If”
you could buy a home online, sight unseen, (which I would never recommend) will a bank or other financial institutions want to work with you? Many banks require an appraisal, and as a potential buyer, you need to have a home inspection.
There are lawyers or other professionals to help you complete the transaction; in many cases, you need to meet with them, sometimes more than once.
There are government agencies that need to be open, including land titles.
The answer is human contact needs to take place, and without this human contact, you only get a big “No” or, at the very least, an answer calling for a delay.
I have mentioned on several of my podcast episodes that I am writing a book titled, “ Vault to Investment Real Estate Success” with the secondary title of the book, “ Building a Strong Financial Foundation, Unlock Sustainable Wealth and Create a Living Legacy.”
Okay, there are a ton of us thinking, now what?
Michael Hyatt, author, blogger, podcaster, and speaker when asked recently about this Coronavirus pandemic situation.
Michael replied, “What does this make possible?”
Possible for You
I could sit in home insolation and insulate myself from the world or get you to put on your thinking cap not only when it comes to your wealth but your physical and mental health.
I have decided for the next 90 days/ blog posts to dedicate my blog to discuss the tough side of investment real estate, how my investment real estate is impacting our thought process regarding our other financial investments. And expose all of the difficulties around owning investment real estate through these uncertain times.
These are also exciting times, and it is going to take the entire village to take care of each other.
I plan to write 90 blog posts and roll out over the next three months, April, May, and June.
My wife and I have an investment real estate portfolio that contributes a substantial part of income to our overall monthly income. Our investment real estate portfolio also carries the most significant amount of expenses.
For every investment property we own, we have a mortgage, property taxes, insurance, bank charges, property management fees, maintenance charges, in some cases, condo fees, and GST.
With the coronavirus, we now have tenants needing help. Helping people is not always easy as they have to do what is best for them, and we understand. Our tenant’s needs are as individual as each person living in our homes.
They either give us notice to move out, leaving a vacancy that will be harder to fill until the pandemic is over.
Others expect a substantial rent decrease (50%), and some tenants are walking away, no notice.
How we are dealing with having to make our payment obligations, we are finding ways to reduce costs or defer costs?
We are helping our tenants who reach out and have lost their jobs. We want to work with them, reduce their rents to what they can live with for the next couple of months.
We also sent every tenant the link to the federal and provincial government assistance programs. The tenants appreciated this information.
All of our tenants were great before this pandemic, why would they not be as good going forward; once they can go back to work.
It is important to remember all landlords can’t reduce, eliminate, or defer all of our operational costs, we have the necessary expenses of operations, and some of us can eat some of these costs short-term, but we need help.
An Action We Can Bank On!
I am pleased that the banks have agreed to implement the mortgage deferral program, up to six months.
We deal with two of Canada’s major banks, and they have been awesome to deal with.
Our banks even sent us an email to ask us if we wanted help. In the email, the banks talked about their online feature to defer our mortgages.
The banks ask you for your mortgage number, give you a drop-down menu with three different reasons you are requesting the mortgage deferral, how many payments you want to defer, a list for you to read and agree to, the file is not too long. It is understandable why they list these items for you to agree to than you click on the submit button.
We had an answer for multiple mortgages deferral requests within the hour, pretty slick, and all were approved.
Also, being in the short-term vacation rental business (i.e., Airbnb) with most of your guests being from outside of the country, they can’t cross the border into your country and are cancelling their bookings. No one knows how long this pandemic will last and folks are cancelling out to June. If the coronavirus situation continues, the most significant revenue months of July, August, and September will dry up; it will be a very tough year.
The last piece of the equation is, some of our properties are part of a condominium complex, and there is an increase in operational costs, no matter if your condo has a tenant or a guest.
Many of the condominium complexes may also have a cash call because the reserve fund study identifies projects that need addressing immediately.
By showing you the underbelly of investment real estate, you are either going to want to stop reading my blogs and listening to my podcasts.
Stay with me on our Convid-19 investment real estate journey; I know we will come out at the back end with some bumps and bruises.
There will be lessons learnt, and we will survive.
Through experiences, you learn, you challenge thinking and finances, and no matter how bad the situation might seem, having part of your financial portfolio in investment real estate is rewarding.
Owning investment real estate allows you to show your humanity; you can give people a hand up who did not ask to be in this COVID-19 situation. People more than ever need a safe and secure home to live.
I see opportunities rolling out by the governments as a hand up and their way of helping to strengthen investment real estate in the marketplace, but this is going to take time. The government recognizes that not everyone can own real estate; people need reliable places to live.
The government programs are helping to stem short-term landlord pain, and if you do an excellent job in dealing with your tenants, you as an investment real estate owner will enjoy the long-term gain.
Live by the Old Mantra, “Healthy, Wealthy and Wise. “
Stick with me for ninety days, and let’s see where this journey takes us, one day at a time.
From Our Happy Place to Yours, Be Healthy, Be Safe Until Our Next Post
Dynamic entrepreneur and sales management strategist; with over 20 years of experience in his field. Rick has achieved multimillion-dollar sales growth while providing award-winning sales leadership and coaching in highly competitive markets.
An active real estate investor since 2002, Rick has developed his purchasing strategies and processes specializing in vacation and recreational properties, single-family homes and condo rentals.
In 2005, Rick re-financed his first rental property to fund the purchase of more positive cash flowing rental properties.
Rick sits on the Board of Directors for several condominium associations and is an active President and Treasurer. Sitting on these boards has given him a wealth of experience and insight into working with property management companies.
Rick has partnered with several joint venture associates and is committed to creating a positive investing experience for his associates by finding the properties, developing the investment, securing the financing and executing a proven positive cash flow system.
Why should you choose Rick as your Online Vault to Investment Real Estate Success Advisor?
An outstanding mentor and coach, Rick will work with you to build your investment real estate business starting from the foundation. From guiding you through the market research and critical drivers, building your team of trades, realtors, and lenders to attracting the investment real estate properties right for your portfolio and the joint venture partners to help you grow.
Through direction and training, Rick will help you develop your investment real estate goals and be a catalyst for you to purchase your first investment real estate property so you can build a strong financial foundation unlocking sustainable wealth and a living legacy for you and many generations to come.
Thank you for taking the only asset that gives us so much through life, but we can never get back our time.
Please join Rick on living his mantra:
” Prosperity for all aspects of your life forever.” W. Rick Harris
